β Scribed by Rohinton Mistry
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
From the Toronto-based Mistry (Such a Long Journey, 1991), a splendid tale of contemporary India that, in chronicling the sufferings of outcasts and innocents trying to survive in the State of Internal Emergency'' of the 1970s, grapples with the great question of how to live in the face of death and despair. Though Mistry is too fine a writer to indulge in polemics, this second novel is also a quietly passionate indictment of a corrupt and ineluctably cruel society. India under Indira Gandhi has become a country ruled by thugs who maim and kill for money and power. The four protagonists (all victims of the times) are: Dina, 40-ish, poor and widowed after only three years of marriage; Maneck, the son of an old school friend of Dina's; and two tailors, Ishvar and his nephew Om, members of the Untouchable caste. For a few months, this unlikely quartet share a tranquil happiness in a nameless city--a city of squalid streets teeming with beggars, where politicians, in the name of progress, abuse the poor and the powerless. Dina, whose dreams of attending college ended when her father died, is now trying to support herself with seamstress work; Maneck, a tenderhearted boy, has been sent to college because the family business is failing; and the two tailors find work with Dina. Though the four survive encounters with various thugs and are saved from disaster by a quirky character known as the Beggarmaster, the times are not propitious for happiness. On a visit back home, Om and Ishvar are forcibly sterilized; Maneck, devastated by the murder of an activist classmate, goes abroad. But Dina and the tailors, who have learnedto maintain a fine balance between hope and despair,'' keep going. A sweeping story, in a thoroughly Indian setting, that combines Dickens's vivid sympathy for the poor with Solzhenitsyn's controlled outrage, celebrating both the resilience of the human spirit and the searing heartbreak of failed dreams. -- Copyright 1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
"Astonishing. . . . A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life." --_Wall Street Journal
"A serious and important work . . . the product of high intelligence and passionate conviction." *--*New York Review of Books
"Monumental. . . . Few have caught the real sorrow and inexplicable strength of India, the unaccountable crookedness and sweetness, as well as Mistry." --Pico Iyer, Time
*"Those who continue to harp on the decline of the novel . . . ought to consider Rohinton Mistry. He needs no infusion of magic realism to vivify the real. The real world, through his eyes, is magical." --*The New York Times_
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
A sexy crime novel featuring an alpha deputy sheriff. He must keep his burgeoning desire for a widowed school teacher from distracting him from his duty to protect a murdered DEA informant's kid brother from a death squad of hired mercenaries looking to tie up loose ends.
With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, i
_A Fine Balance_ , Rohinton Mistryβs stunning internationally acclaimed bestseller, is set in mid-1970s India. It tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a βState of Internal Emergency.β Through days of b
{ August 2021 - Verified ebook for complete book description, cover, table of contents, separation of book (front/ back matter, parts, and chapters), and epub format error checking. } Paperback, 728 pages Published 1995 Emblem Editions (1997) With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep tha
Walt Duffy was a world-renowned ornithologist, outdoorsman, and nature photographer who spent his life traveling and taking some of the most highly regarded photographs of birds in their natural habitats. Until, that is, over a year ago, when a climbing accident left him paraplegic. Now he spends hi